Bubble Boy (2001)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Main Menu Audio & Animation Featurette-Director's Diary (7) Featurette-Building A Better Bubble Suit Featurette-Production Design Gallery Featurette-Storyboards - Niagara Falls Audio Commentary-Blair Hayes (Director) & Jake Gyllenhaal (Actor)
Rating
Year Of Production	2001
Running Time	80:18
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Blair Hayes
Studio Distributor	Walt Disney Studios Home Ent.	Starring	Jake Gyllenhaal Swoosie Kurtz Marley Shelton Danny Trejo John Carroll Lynch
Case	Soft Brackley-Transp
RPI	$34.95	Music	John Ottman

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English English for the Hearing Impaired Swedish Norwegian Danish Finnish Icelandic Estonian Swedish Audio Commentary Norwegian Audio Commentary Danish Audio Commentary Finnish Audio Commentary	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Bubble Boy is one of those movies that makes you wonder how it was possible for a major studio to have given it the green light. A few months ago, I sat through a awful movie called Freddy Got Fingered which I now class as the worst movie I have ever seen. Well, I can tell you now that Bubble Boy is only marginally better than Freddy.

    Bubble Boy is one of those movies that pokes fun at many of the less fortunate people in our society, and after the first ten minutes, the jokes start to wear very thin. Our story starts with young Jimmy (Jake Gyllenhal), just born in the local hospital. His parents are informed that their young son has no immunity and therefore he will need to be restricted to a purified air tent for life or there is every chance he may die. Jimmy starts to grow up, and year by year spends his whole day in his bedroom tent with his adoring Mother teaching him everything he has to learn in life. As the years go by and Jimmy reaches adolescence, he starts to notice Chloe (Mary Shelton), the pretty girl who lives next door. Jimmy starts to become very friendly with Chloe despite all of her friends asking her why she would want to be friends with a 'retard'. Jimmy starts to fall in love with Chloe, but one day she tells him she is moving across the country to live with her new fiancé whom she will soon marry. After a couple of days, Jimmy decides that he must tell Chloe his true feelings for her, so he makes himself a mobile bubble suit and set off across the country to try and stop the wedding. It is here on Jimmy's cross-country excursion that we meet some poor unfortunate souls and no holds are barred when trying to make fun of these individuals.

    Bubble Boy also stars Swoosie Kurtz, Danny Trejo and John Carroll Lynch.

Video

    One of my fellow reviewers always says that the worse the movie, the better the transfer will be. Well, once again, this is the case, and although the movie is a stinker the transfer is excellent

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 2.35:1 and is also 16x9 enhanced.

    The transfer of this disc is extremely clear and the sharpness is wonderful. Shadow detail is also spot-on, although I must say that there were not that many night scenes in this movie at all to test shadow detail. There was no low level noise detected.

    The colours on this DVD looked wonderful and there was certainly nothing to complain about here.

    There were no MPEG artefacts seen on this disc. Aliasing was non-existent and there were no film artefacts noticed either. This was a real solid presentation all around.

    This is a dual layered disc with no layer change occurring during the movie that I could detect. This disc has a very short running time of 80 minutes (believe me you would not want it to go any longer), and presumably the layer change separated the movie and the special features.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The audio transfer on this disc is very good but falls a little short of reference quality.

    There are two audio tracks on this DVD, the first being an English Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack and the second being a screen-specific audio commentary by actor Jake Gyllenhaal and Director Blair Haynes.

    The dialogue quality on this disc was good although a slight distortion in the actors' voices was noticed on a couple of occasions. Fortunately, this was very brief and should not distract from the movie.

    Audio sync was not a problem at all with this disc and looked spot on.

    The musical score by John Ottman was the highlight of this movie. The score was wonderful and offered up a deep musical soundstage throughout my listening room.

    The surround channels were used to good effect when called for, but this is not the type of movie that requires active surrounds throughout and they were only used when necessary.

    The subwoofer, like the surrounds, was also used quite sparingly for the most part but now and again when it was called for the bass was deep and had a good sense of depth to it.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Building a Better Bubble Suit (11.58)

    This feature explains how the bubble suit was made to work in the movie including how the suit was ventilated so the actor would not get too uncomfortable wearing the suit all day. This feature also includes the usual interviews and behind the scenes footage. This feature has an aspect ratio of 1.33:1 and carries a Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack.

Director's Diary

    This Director's diary contains seven scenes from the movie but shows them from the Director's behind the camera perspective. These scenes have a running time of approximately 2 minutes each but after you watch the first one, the rest are basically the same. All seven scenes have an aspect ratio of 1.33:1 and carry a Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack.

Production Design Gallery (2.44)

    This is a bunch of still drawings from the movie's production underscored by a musical number. This short feature has an aspect ratio of 1.33:1 and also carries a Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack.

Storyboard: Niagara Falls (2.22)

    This short feature is a bunch of still drawings from the Niagara Falls sketch of the movie and is underscored by a musical number. This feature has an aspect ratio of 2.35:1 and is not 16x9 enhanced.

Screen Specific Audio Commentary

    This audio commentary is by the main actor of the movie (Jake Gyllenhal) and the Director (Blair Hayes). I actually preferred listening to the audio commentary to listening to the movie's soundtrack.

    The Region 4 version of this DVD misses out on;

• Crazy/Beautiful trailer

    The Region 1 version of this DVD misses out on;

• Nothing

    There is no reason to prefer one version over the other as they are essentially identical content-wise, so I will declare this one a draw.

    Bubble Boy was not a great movie for me, although I am sure there is a target audience out there somewhere for it. Maybe if you enjoyed Freddy Got Fingered this might just be what you are looking for.

    The video quality is excellent.

    The audio quality is very good.

    The extras are certainly plentiful if you can be bothered sitting through them, but after watching the movie I am not sure if you will want to.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall